hi ppl
81 gl interstate.
i have a strong smell of exhaust gases, emission gas, while i ride.constantly.it gets circulated behind the fairing straight to my face.takes years of my life (in the long run)
if i crank it on the high-way, smell gets worse
seems like i have a hole or sth in the exhaust that i can't find (?!)
any ideas?
appreciated

Had the same problem. Finally found the exhaust leak. It was under the rear mounting bracket. Push your little finger between the bracket and pipe to check for a rough spot. ( disclaimer-of course the muffler has to be cooled off). Had to remove the exhaust to fix it. Fabbed a small metal piece to cover the hole and welded it to the muffler. Cured the problem, no more stink....

tnx RIDE DONT HIDE
will check that area for sure!
RBGERSON:
we dont get sea foam here
another suggestion for making her smoke?
im facing an oil change soon, can i use baby oil or other smoke making substance?
tnx

Unscrew the sparkplugs and squirt in about an eyedropper of motor oil and replace the plugs. Won't hurt anything, and it'll make some decent smoke for a couple mins until it burns off..... That smoke will last a little longer than trying to make steam... ....or instead of taking out the sparkplugs you could just take out the little screw plugs from the intake tubes where you connect the gauges for balancing carbs and just squirt the oil into the intakes. It'll probably run with one screw missing on each side, you could squirt more oil while it's running (it'd suck it in) if you ran out of smoke and needed more....

The exhaust header below the head area was the culprit. Very hard to see. The factory welds will eventually rust a crack can develop. For me the crack was about 3-4 inches long. It's very hard to see with the exhaust mounted to the bike, but if you get a flash light and try to follow the header back to the pipe, you should be able to see it. It's a factory crimp weld that fails.

I dropped the exhaust and took to a welder to fix it. Only the right side had failed, but I had him do the left because it was cracking as well. Smells much less now and have peace of mind.

Let me know if you find that leak. Also you can grab a feather or piece of small toilet paper and put it up to pipe areas to 'see' the leak.

It could also be from your exhaust coupler tube which joins the left and right side under the seat. If the paper seal is wore out, you'll get some exhaust leak there as well as I still have a small leak there, but it isn't very bothersome.